I was looking at the MG34 on my StuG and thinking how HL fitting the machine gun flashing LED to the drivers vision slot is the only real bad thing on it. I then wondered how difficult it would be to reposion the LED and run a fibreoptic cable from it to the MG34 on the loaders hatch. When i filled the gaps under the fender I notice the MG LED was only hot glued in place so that shouldnt be too hard to move once i finally get the hull opened. So i decided to see if I could drill out the plastic MG34 barrel well enough to run a fibreoptic cable down it.
I started by cutting the barrel off the rear of the gun just after the mounting point as the drills i have wouldnt be able to do the whole barrel in one go. At first i figured i'd drill from the mussel end as far as i could go and angle the cut down so it would eventually emerge on the underside of the barrel. I could then cut a groove to the end of the barrel, run the cable in this and fill it back in with milliput. But the drilling went much better than expected and the drill got almost as far is it could go before finally emerging. I then drilled a corresponding hole from the rear end to meet up with the first hole, cleaned up the meeting point by opening up the groove and checked the cable would run through it fine.
I then drilled a hole into the rear section of the gun to emerge just by the pistol grip on the side the figure will be holding it so his hand & arm will eventually hide the cable. The front barrel was them glued onto the armour plate and I'm currently making a small bracket to fix the rear of the gun to the same point and hold it at the correct angle.
Here's a test vidoe of how bright the fibre optic cable is running through the barrel:
The white light at the beginning is the front light on the StuG. The red light is the LED but it seems my little camera didnt pick up the flashing.
Not bad for the price of a bit of fibre optic cable... which had been sitting in the bits box for years
( my idea lads but ill let him have it 
